It was reported this morning that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided to kill three or the six remaining adults in the famous NW Montana Ninemile wolf pack. Previously this year, they had Wildlife Services kill two of pack's two-year-olds. The pack has uncharacteristically begun to prey on cattle after co-existing with them for years.
History of the Nine Pack-
The Ninemile Pack began 1989 when a male and female met in the Ninemile Valley about 30 miles north of Missoula. The pack has had many ups and downs. Its early history was chronicled in The Ninemile Wolves by Rick Bass. The Ninemile Valley is certainly not a urban area, but it has many farms with cattle, numerous roads, and a good deal of ongoing timber harvest. Many people find the persistence and generally "good" behavior of this pack surprising given all the human activity in its territory. Since the pack was established it has produced eight litters of pups, totaling 40 wolves. Many of these has dispersed to start new Montana packs, and some have moved to Idaho, including the wolf who is now the alpha male of the Idaho/Montana border, Kelly Creek Pack.
Livestock Predation and the Pack-
Since 1990 the pack had been responsible for the death of only 4 cow calves. In the past occasional depredations had been controlled by trapping, collaring, and releasing the wolves where they had been trapped. This year more lethal measures have been employed, but the predation had continued. Joe Fontaine, who is in charge of managing the Montana wolves, was quoted as saying be "was baffled" at the sudden change in predatory behavior by this pack. "There's no rhyme or reason. The whitetail (deer) abundance is high in that area, and the wolves have co-existed with the cattle since 1990. They really haven't killed a whole lot of livestock in the Ninemile," Fontaine told the Billings Gazette.
I understand that so far the attempts to kill the three adults have failed.
My comments-
It's my understanding that Joe has really gone out of his way to think of ways to conserve this pack in a non-lethal way. This is doubly important now that the population of Montana wolves seems to be in considerable decline.
In my opinion, the decline of Montana wolves does make one important point about wolf recovery. Much of wolf population growth and decline is subject to random events in small populations. Any statistician could tell us this. The recovery goal of 10 packs (or about 100 wolves) is not overly ambitious. It may be too small because two years ago the Montana wolf population was at about 90, and now they're considerably less due to control actions, a bad year for white-tailed deer in 1997, movement of packs to Canada, and failure of the wolves to persistently move to northern Idaho and northeastern Washington. ]
Note that the Montana wolf recovery area is Montana outside of the Yellowstone wolf experimental wolf recovery area and northern Idaho, north of Interstate 90.
I should add that one Ninemile disperser to northern Idaho, "Auntie," was illegally killed last year. Other dispersers to northern Idaho have probably also been killed.
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